OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Chromosomal DNA ends shorten after each round of replication due to end-replication
problem and post replication processing. The ends of linear eukaryotic chromosomes are
capped and protected by protein-DNA complexes forming a structure called the telomere.
The telomere length is crucial as critically short telomeres activate the DNA damage response
pathway leading to cell senescence. The telomere is extended by a protein-RNA enzyme
complex with reverse transcriptase function named telomerase. The process by which
telomerase extends telomeres must be tightly regulated. Human telomerase is inactive in
normal human somatic cells but activated by various mechanisms in over 85~90% of cancer
cells. The aim of my work is to obtain high resolution structure of human telomerase complexes using cryo-EM.
I present biochemical and structural information of human telomerase complexes.
